A Comparative Study of the Robustness and Resilience of Retail Areas in Seoul, Korea before and after the COVID-19 Outbreak, Using Big Data

Dongjun Kim, Jinsung Yun, Kijung Kim and Seungil Lee
Additional contact information
Dongjun Kim: Department of Urban Planning & Design, University of Seoul, Seoul 02504, Korea
Jinsung Yun: Department of Urban Planning & Design, University of Seoul, Seoul 02504, Korea
Kijung Kim: Senior Researcher, SH Urban Research Institute, Seoul Housing & Communities Corporation, Seoul 02504, Korea
Seungil Lee: Department of Urban Planning & Design, University of Seoul, Seoul 02504, Korea

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 6, 1-21

Abstract: This study aimed to assess the robustness and resilience of retail areas in Seoul, based on the changes in sales before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. The spatial range and temporal scope of the study were set as district- and community-level retail areas in Seoul, from January 2019 to August 2020, to consider the effect of the COVID-19 outbreak. The data used in this study comprised sales information from the retail sector, namely Shinhan Card sales data for domestic and foreigners by business type in Seoul, provided by Seoul Big Data Campus. We classified the retail areas based on the change in sales before and after the COVID-19 outbreak, using time series clustering. The results of this study showed that time series clustering based on the change in sales can be used to classify retail areas. The similarities and differences were confirmed by comparing the functional and structural characteristics of the district- and community-level retail areas by cluster and by retail area type. Furthermore, we derived knowledge on the decline and recovery of retail areas before and after a national crisis such as the emergence of a COVID-19 wave, which can provide significant information for sustainable retail area management and regional economic development.

Keywords: retail areas; COVID-19; sales change; robustness; resilience; agglomeration economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/6/3302/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/6/3302/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:6:p:3302-:d:518790

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().